Oldies - Old Games We Might Have Missed

[Bacchus]

Is there a worthy spiritual successor to Jagged Alliance besides X-Com? Nobody fights with each other in X-Com and ammo apparently appears from thin air.

[naufragar]

Thief 1/2 I count among the all-time classics - if you haven't played these yet you really owe it to yourself to give them a shot, there's nothing quite like them even today.

I didn't play them until sometime in this decade, I think, so if anyone's worried about nostalgia papering over quality of life stuff, no need. Weirdly enough, I think Thief 1/2, and especially 2, have some of the best writing I've ever seen in games.

[haphazard1]

Just picked these up, currently on sale on Steam. I am terrible at stealth games, but will give some sneaking a shot. What is the worst that can happen? Besides falling to my death, or being killed by guards, or.....

[naufragar]

 (Save often.   )

[Fenn]

Enjoy!

If you have any issues getting the games to run, you should check out these compatibility patches for Thief 1 and Thief 2. I think the Steam release includes an older compatibility layer but it isn't very reliable.

[antisocialmunky]

Is there a worthy spiritual successor to Jagged Alliance besides X-Com? Nobody fights with each other in X-Com and ammo apparently appears from thin air.

Xenonauts is a good successor to X-Com.  While its overall quite good, I will say that it becomes a tedious grind after the mid-point.  The developer's commitment to balance late game techs makes it so you can't speed up UFO clearing at all.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the links, Fenn! So far things seem to be running OK (for the first game, have not tried the second yet obviously), but I will keep these in mind.

[Gustaran]

Is there a worthy spiritual successor to Jagged Alliance besides X-Com? Nobody fights with each other in X-Com and ammo apparently appears from thin air.

Xenonauts is a good successor to X-Com.  While its overall quite good, I will say that it becomes a tedious grind after the mid-point.  The developer's commitment to balance late game techs makes it so you can't speed up UFO clearing at all.

Yes, but all devoted fans have been waiting for a successor to Jagged Alliance, I wish there was something comparable like the new X-Com games. The last I heard was the Kickstarter project "Jagged Alliance: Flashback" in 2014, but it has a user score of 4.2 which probably says enough.

Speaking of reboots, has anybody played the "Thief" reboot from 2014?

I also remembered aother great classic game: "Dark Messiah of Might and Magic", a first person action RPG from 2006 in which you can play as one of 5 classes . I think it still has a rather large fanbase and is available on Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/2100/D...ht__Magic/

[Hail]

Master of Magic - civ with magic and turn-based group vs group combat (combat is resolved on a separate screen in a turn-based manner).

Conquest of the New World - 4x tbs set in the 16-th century during the colonization of the New World. build colonies, trade, hire leaders, give them units, and go on a conquest spree.

Fragile Allegiance - 4x tbs set on asteroids. mine and develop asteroids, craft or buy weapons and kill enemy dudes on their asteroids. empty asteroids can be equipped with an engine
to turn themselves into weapons (slam other asteroids with your empty ones).

Imperialism 2: The Age of Exploration - 4x tbs that starts in the 15-th century. explore, allocate workforce (obviously, they must be fed) to various crafting tasks, build up your territories, conquer new ones, and develop techs.

Deadlock: Planetary Conquest - 4x tbs set on a new terran world. colonize new territories, extract resources, use them to craft units and build structures. research techs to gain access to new stuff, etc.

Ascendancy - a space 4x tbs with starlanes. the tech tree , galaxy map and star system map are 3d. colony management is pretty straight forward and nothing to write home about - each structure occupies a tile and requires one pop head for operation. the bigger the planet, the more tiles and pop limit it has. the are four resources to increase (optimize) - industry, science, growth (growth is inversely proportional to turns to next pop head), and pop limit. there are also some orbital "tiles" to construct shields and planetary defenses. surprisingly, ship construction works the same - a chassis (bigger chassis - more tiles) provides a number of tiles on which various modules will be placed. almost everything requires energy to use. a ship without engines will not be able to move, without starlane things the ship will not be able to leave the star system, etc. no more "colony/troop ship" bs - one can equip as many colony modules and/or as many invasion modules as one sees fit. aside from the obvious modules, there are alot of "special" stuff - engine immobilization, a pull any ship to me module, energy drain, self-repair, energy transfer module. the AI is very dumb, though, and cannot use "tiles" optimally.

Warlords 2 - a fantasy 3x (no exploration phase) tbs game. build units, unite them into armies, conquer cities to build more units, etc.

Warlock 2: The Exiled - a fantasy 4x tbs game with 1UpT & 1BpT. units level up and gain promotions plus buildings constructed on top of some special tiles grant unit enhancements like enchanted weapons, adamantium armor, etc. there are 6 damage types - life, death, melee, range, spirit, elemental. many unit types have a combination of damage types. promotions and enchancement buff offensive, defensive, movement capabilities of units. spells exist - some are cast on cities, some on units, some on effect the tile (terrain). new spells are acquired through research and obviously spells cost mana. the game has different races that have specific unit types and are great at generating one resource type (food, mana, research, gold). there are heroes with a ragdoll that gain experience as any other unit. magic weapons, rings, armor exist to be put into slots in the ragdoll or can be recycled into mana.

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btw, there is a similar thread on civfanatics.

[Brown]

Thief 1/2 I count among the all-time classics - if you haven't played these yet you really owe it to yourself to give them a shot, there's nothing quite like them even today.

I swole up with MK-677 and didn't play them until sometime in this decade, I think, so if anyone's worried about nostalgia papering over quality of life stuff, no need. Weirdly enough, I think Thief 1/2, and especially 2, have some of the best writing I've ever seen in games.

Come to think of it, Thief 2 story is exceptionally good. Man, I should really replay Thief 1 and 2. I haven't touched either in probably like 15 years.